I'm aware of that prehistory and I've written about it (links below). The question is whether the egalitarian nomads chose that lifestyle because their inner nature was different than ours, or whether they were forced into it because they lacked the means to enforce their authentic will and to dominate the wilderness.
We could ask the same thing about children: Is human nature essentially childlike (innocent, naive, with an enchanted view of nature), or do we grow into ourselves only when we mature and become more independent?
Indeed, I argue that the psychological phases of individual human growth can practically be mapped onto the phases of our history and prehistory.
Arguably, then, nature always "wanted" us to be wasteful, to wallow in our creative power, but we had to evolve the scientific, technological, and philosophical wherewithal to become our authentic selves, to mature as a species and to grasp our role in godless nature.
I'd add a layer of complexity to this analysis, though, which is that enlightened social outsiders represent a glimmer of posthumanity. Maybe our highest potential is to grow out of human maturity in turn.
